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Sousa on Monday will air an identical $130.4-billion spending plan to the fiscal blueprint Ontarians first saw on May 1.

That budget‎ was not a hit with NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and the Progressive Conservative’s then-leader Tim Hudak, forcing the cancellation of the minority legislature and sparking a June 12 election.

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals won a majority in the spring campaign and because Sousa’s May Day budget was the party’s de facto platform, it will be re-introduced intact at Queen’s Park.

“It lays out smart, practical and necessary investments we must make to maintain our competitive advantage and to keep our economy growing,” Sousa said in an Empire Club speech last Thursday.

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The left-leaning budget, which has a $12.5 billion deficit, delivers a provincial pension plan and promises $130 billion for infrastructure projects over the next decade.

That includes $29 billion for public transit, highways, roads, and bridges — $15 billion for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and $14 billion for the rest of Ontario.

As well, there’s $11 billion to repair and build elementary and secondary schools over the next 10 years and another $11.4 billion for new and redeveloped hospitals.

To jumpstart the massive Ring of Fire mineral deposit in Northern Ontario, there’s $1 billion to build infrastructure to help mine chromite, a key ingredient of stainless steel.

There’s also a 10-year, $2.5-billion “jobs and prosperity fund” of handouts and incentives for businesses to move to the province, which critics have derided as corporate welfare.

The budget will raise income taxes on Ontario’s top 2 per cent of wage earners — about 220,000 people making $150,000 and up — while at the same time boosting payments to those on welfare.

In all, there are $900 million in new taxes, including a hike in the levy on cigarettes.

Sousa’s plan will remove the “debt retirement charge” from hydro bills in 2016, saving the average ratepayer about $70 a year.

In keeping with Wynne’s pledge to be “the social-justice premier,” the Ontario Child Benefit, which helps low-income families, will rise from $1,210 annually per child to $1,310 and will be indexed to inflation starting next year.

Another anti-poverty measure is a 1 per cent increase for recipients of Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program benefits, which could pay those eligible an additional $30 a month.

The cornerstone of the budget — and a key plank in the Liberals’ re-election a month ago — is the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, similar to the Canada Pension Plan, forcing Ontarians to contribute 1.9 per cent of their paycheques if they don’t have a plan through their work.

That would mean an additional $788 deduction for someone earning $45,000 annually with employers having to match contributions.

The ORPP would eventually pay out up to $25,000 annually for future retirees. That’s on top of the CPP maximum payout of $12,500.

While there are numerous sops to the New Democrats — when the budget was crafted, the then-minority Liberals needed to appeal to the third party to have any hope of getting it passed — Horwath said Ontarians should be wary of a “Trojan Horse plan.”

The NDP leader warned last Thursday that the Liberals will unleash “the fire sale of public assets,” including parts of Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

Horwath said the Liberal budget “will leave families paying more, will leave corporations paying less and could lead to the biggest cuts since those made by PC premier Mike Harris in the 1990s.

Last week, interim Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Wilson urged Wynne to slow her “wild spending spree” because credit-rating agencies are set to downgrade the province, which could increase borrowing costs.

“If we get the downgrade, which mostly everyone is expecting except you, if we get that downgrade, a 1-per- increase in interest rates would cost us over $3 billion a year,” he told the premier last Wednesday in the legislature.

Wilson said such a financial hit would force the government “to cut front-line services like health and education.

“There is no other type of mathematical equation possible,” he said.

Wynne, however, insisted “it’s just not true that there’s no evidence that we will be able to eliminate the deficit.

“In fact, we’re on target to eliminate the deficit by 2017-18. We have met our deficit-reduction targets every single year.”

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